Straight Rum Night
by Daine
Summary: Jack has regained the Black Pearl and his freedom, but he has other reasons for his straight rum nights.


A/N: A night on the town reveals much of Jack's character. Title inspired by the song "Straight Tequila Night."

Disclaimer: Sadly, Disney owns Pirates of the Caribbean.

**Straight Rum Night**

He sat in the back of the crowded tavern, nursing a near-empty bottle of rum. Blue smoke from countless cigars filled the room and clouded his dark eyes. He drained the last of the rum and slammed the bottle down on the dirty tabletop to join its fellows. "More rum!" he demanded fiercely, swaying in his chair. Despite the raucous noise in the tavern, the barkeep's ears were tuned to just this sort of request. The old man shuffled towards the back room to procure yet another bottle for the dark haired pirate. 

Captain Jack Sparrow leaned precariously back in his chair. It had been easy to find a tavern among the hundreds in Tortuga that did not already contain a member of his crew on shore leave. If that meant he had to visit one of the less desirable establishments, who cared? The alcohol was just as potent, and this barkeep was familiar enough with Jack to allow him to skip the inconvenience of a mug altogether. It was not good for shipboard morale for a crew to see their captain getting thoroughly drunk, even if that captain was Jack. It was all right for them to _see_ him intoxicated, which they did on a constant basis, but it was _not_ all right for them to see him getting there. Jack accepted that convolution of logic as a fact of life. A slightly mad smile played about his lips as he thought about it.

The occupants of the nearby tables shifted over slightly when they saw Jack smile. He barely noticed. They thought he was mad, which was a handy reputation for a pirate captain. He let his smile grow larger and his eyes glowed faintly. They didn't understand. None of them did.

Glass breaking, fist fights and shouting echoed through the filthy, ill-lit room, punctuated by the squeals and titters of the cheap whores that leaned provocatively over tables or perched on sailor's laps. The chaos was more familiar and soothing to Jack than his mother's voice, though that was not surprising. He had not seen his mother since he was seven. It had its own rhythm and beat that fit itself to the melody running through Jack's brain. He began to sing softly. "De dum, da dee, da dum, and really bad eggs," he finished aloud, idly caressing the neck of an empty bottle with his long fingers. His head lolled back on his shoulders as he drank in the sounds of Tortuga like a dying man.

The only warning he had was that of a sickening sensation in his gut as the darkness swelled within his mind. A thousand mad voices rushed through his skull, sprouting from the dark places deep inside him. They laughed at him, demanding answers he could not give as he scrabbled madly for some mental purchase on which to anchor his dubious sanity. 

His grasping fingers closed on a bottleneck. The barkeep had brought his rum at last. He forced the cork out and gulped the drink down, feeling the fiery brew burn his throat and warm his stomach. The voices quieted. He drank until he could no longer hear them.  

Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he regarded the half-empty bottle in his hand thoughtfully. "Elizabeth was right about you, you know," he told it solemnly. "You are a vile drink. But she doesn't know the half of it, does she?" He took a long pull at the bottle. "How would she like me without you, hmm? Tell me that, rum." He held the bottle close to his ear as if waiting for a response.

That brief moment was all the voices needed. The clamored for attention in his brain, their voices harder to understand this time and slurred by drink. But he did not fear them, oh no, not him. He had the means to defeat them.

The empty bottle crashed down on his table, the loud noise ringing in his now-silent head. The bottles in front of him doubled, then doubled again. He grinned maniacally. _Imagine someone drinking that much rum!_ he thought as the bottles resolved into one image again. He wondered if he could do it. 

Well, there was no sense in not trying, was there?

He reached for a discarded bottle at the next table and gulped half of it down. Tilting his head, Jack admired the collection of empty bottles already before him. No one could out drink Captain Jack Sparrow! He laughed, pleased with the thought.

A voice caught his ear. "You mean Jack Sparrow?"

"Captain," he muttered. "Captain Jack Sparrow." He launched an unsteady glare at the nearby customers, trying to ascertain which ones were discussing him.

"Over there," continued the voice. Jack had almost identified the speaker. "Crazy as a loon, that one. He captains the _Black Pearl. _His crew is fanatically loyal to him, though why they follow a drunken madman is beyond me. They say he's never sober long enough to string two thoughts together, but the _Pearl_ brings in twice the booty of any other ship just the same."  Jack nodded judiciously at this allegation and swayed to his feet, still clutching his bottle. He threw some coin onto the table – technically not enough to cover all the rum he'd consumed, but Jack knew the barkeep overcharged – and headed for the exit, tipping his hat at the men who had been discussing him. They blanched as they realized Jack had overheard. 

A crazy smile lit his face and reflected in his eyes. Mad? No, he wasn't mad. He knew madness. Madness was threatening darkness and pain and voices that spoke indecipherable tongues inside the mind. It meant a loss of reasoning skills and the inability to command a vessel. Madness lurked inside of him, and he knew it, and sometimes he thought that his crew knew it. But he was not mad. 

Jack ambled out the door with the same rolling grace that he had entered with. There was barely a wobble, other than the ordinary, of course, to betray just how much alcohol he had partaken that night. His eyes burned with smoke, his gut was heavy with drink. It was time to return to the _Pearl_. 

As Jack sauntered along the docks, swigging the last of his 'borrowed' bottle of rum, he could still hear the whispers bubbling just beneath the surface of his mind. The darkness still hid within him, subdued but not forgotten. However, it would not surface again this night; Jack had made sure of that. He wondered what would happen if the day came when his rum no longer contained the voices. 

He shrugged off the idea with a laugh. There was no need for thoughts like that. He was Captain of the _Black Pearl_, he had a loyal crew, and was on his way to regaining his title as the most feared pirate captain in the Caribbean. Captain Jack Sparrow could handle anything – mutineers, curses, hanging, even the madness that threatened from within his very skin. 

Finishing the rum, Jack tossed it behind him with careless abandon, hardly listening to the crash as the glass shattered on the wood planks. On a whim, he stopped and looked up at the stars. He grinned wildly and raised his hat to the night sky. "A very vile drink, Miss Swann!" he proclaimed, and stood at attention in the dark night, as if he watched the Governor himself parade by.

_Please review._


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